


On Her Knees and Out of Luck, She Looks Up

by sartiebodyshots



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-04 20:11:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6673885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sartiebodyshots/pseuds/sartiebodyshots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sereda wakes up to a strange sound outside and is delighted by what she finds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Her Knees and Out of Luck, She Looks Up

Sereda hears something strange when she wakes up from a darkspawn nightmare one night, exhausted and sad.  It sounds like dozens of fingers tapping on her tent.  

Part of her wants to just lay there and listen to the strange sound mingled with the sound of Zevran breathing beside her.  She is so weary, down to her bones.  Her home is so far away (it doesn’t even really exist for her anymore) and the wars they’re fighting seem unwinnable.  Even if they defeat Loghain, they’ll still have to fight the archdemon.  Insurmountable task after insurmountable task.  Death after death, their screams ringing in her ears.

During nights like tonight, when the darkspawn nightmares come as some strange topsider thing makes noise outside, she misses her home and her family, as they were, with a dull ache in her chest.  

But her curiosity is stronger than her weariness, so she carefully removes her arm from Zevran’s sleeping body.  She kisses his bare shoulder before sitting up to pull on a shirt.  It’s a little too long for her, down to her mid thigh, so she doesn’t bother with pants.  

Sereda crawls out of her tent, blinking.  There’s something falling on her.  It takes a minute for her to figure it out, standing and staring up at the sky.  

Water.  Water is falling from the sky.  It’s almost unbelievable.  This must be rain.

She stares upwards, mouth open to catch the water.  The water is so cool sliding down her throat and down her body.  It’s like nothing she’s ever felt before.  

Sereda stretches her arms upwards, letting each vertebrae in her back pop and crackle.  It feels like everything that aches and twists and hurts inside of her is washing away.  For once, instead of hearing the dead, all she hears is the sound of the rain pattering against the trees and the ground.

“Sereda?” Alistair’s voice is soft against the rain.  

Her breath catches in her throat- she forgot he was out on watch duty- and she looks down to see her friend watching her.

“Alistair,” Sereda says, smiling widely.  

“You okay?” Alistair asks.  

She squints a little and sees that he’s hunched under a tarp.  

“Yeah!” Sereda says.  

“Okay… because you’re just standing in the rain like you’ve- oh, by the Maker, you’ve never seen rain before, have you?” Alistair asks.

Sereda takes a few steps towards him so he doesn’t wake anyone up.  The ground squishes under her feet in the most delightful way.  

“Nope,” Sereda says, shaking her head.  “This is… unbelievable.”  

Alistair laughs.  “It’s good to see you relax a little bit.”

“I relax plenty,” Sereda says, laughing, too, because she’s giddy with the rain.  She nods back towards her tent, where Zevran is.

“I don’t want to see that.  Or hear that, as is usually the case,” Alistair says.  

“But Zevran is excellent at helping me relax,” Sereda says with a shrug.

Alistair shakes his head.  “D’you want to come under this tarp and out of the rain?”

“No way,” Sereda says, inhaling deeply and looking back up to the sky.  “I don’t know how you guys do anything but enjoy the rain.”

“It’s just… rain.  You know, normal, everyday rain,” Alistair says.  

“I will truly never understand your people, Alistair,” Sereda says.  

Alistair leans forward a little bit.  “But you still like me, right?”

“Of course, my friend,” Sereda says, patting his cheek with a wet hand.  “Always.”

“Good,” Alistair says, with a smile she can feel.  

“Well, well, what are the stunningly attractive Grey Wardens up to in the rain at such a late hour?” Zevran’s sleepy voice comes from behind her.

Sereda spins around, still enjoying the way the earth squishes beneath her feet.  It’s hard to believe the Stone that makes up Orzammar is beneath something so soft.  “Zevran!  It’s raining!”

Zevran chuckles, deep in his chest.  “As I have noticed.”

“It’s so lovely,” Sereda says, with a sudden burst of emotion. 

Here she is, on the surface, and she’s okay.  Here she is, being cared for by these people, and she’s okay.  Here she is, experiencing all these new things, and she’s okay.

It’s enough to make her explode, after being certain for so long that there was no real way for her to go forward after her brother’s death.  There might be tears sliding down her face; she’s not sure with the rain racing down her cheeks.

“Yes, it is,” Zevran says, watching her.  

Sereda crooks her finger to draw him out of her tent.  She wants to feel him and the rain at once.  Delightfully, he obeys, stepping into the rain.

The rain doesn’t bring out the same euphoria in Zevran as it has in Sereda, but he still smiles as the rain soaks him.  His hair sticks to his face in great chunks, but somehow, Zevran still looks beautiful.  He reaches forward to run his fingers through Sereda’s soaked hair.

“You two are crazy,” Alistair says, shaking his head.  “You’re going to get pneumonia and be miserable.”

“You should join us,” Zevran says, reaching a hand forward to Alistair.  

“Noooooo thank you,” Alistair says.  “I’m wet enough already.”

“More rain for us, then,” Sereda says gleefully, as if Alistair was going to somehow absorb all the rain by standing up.

“You do know that that’s not how rain works, right?” Alistair asks.

Sereda giggles, leaning against Zevran.  “It could be.”

Zevran wraps his arms around her and she can feel his laughter, too.  “You are positively giddy, my dear Warden.”

Sereda turns and presses herself against Zevran.  She stands up on her tiptoes so she can kiss Zevran gently, letting the rain caress them both.  

After a minute, Alistair makes an uncomfortable coughing noise.  “Sereda, while you're a very beautiful woman, I don’t actually want to see your butt, which I can right now, because that shirt is too short and the rain makes it… cling… anyway.”

Sereda hurriedly pulls away from Zevran with a grunt, pulling down her shirt.  Her face flames despite the cooling rain.  

“Sorry,” she says, wincing.

Quite kindly, Zevran’s hands come up to help preserve her modesty as she turns around to apologize.  That preserving her modesty involves fondling her is an added bonus for them both.  

“It is a beautiful backside, yes?” Zevran asks, laughing.

“I-I don’t think I should say anything.  Nope.  Not saying a thing,” Alistair says, shaking his head so hard that Sereda is worried it’s going to fall off.  “There is no good way to answer that question.”

“Perhaps, my dear Warden, we should retire to your tent before Alistair’s head- or something else- explodes,” Zevran says.

“Yes!  Please!  Listen to the assassin,” Alistair says plaintively.  “I can’t believe I’m agreeing with Zevran.”

Sereda wants desperately to stay out in the rain.  Something about it makes her feel whole and undamaged in a way that she craves.  Wholeness is a feeling that she lost somewhere between the Deep Roads and Ostagar. 

“It’ll rain again, right?” Sereda asks softly, turning back to Zevran.  

Zevran strokes her cheek tenderly.  “Yes, of course.  I suspect quite soon.”

Sereda presses her face against his wet palm, reveling in the feeling of his hand combined with the rain falling against her skin.  She wishes they could stand like this forever.  

“Okay.  To the tent,” Sereda says.  She presses herself against Zevran as she turns to face Alistair halfway.  “Sorry for the ass thing, Alistair.”

“It’s fine.  I already know far too much about you,” Alistair says, waving them away while looking slightly miserable.  “I mean, it’s not like we don’t all hear what you get up to anyway.”

Sereda winces again.  “Sorry?”

Alistair laughs.  “No, you’re not.”

“True,” Sereda says.  “Goodnight, Alistair.”

“Goodnight, Sereda,” Alistair says with a put upon sigh.

Zevran tugs her gently towards her tent and Sereda lets him, tilting her face upwards.  She wants every precious raindrop she can get.

“Are you coming in?” Zevran asks.

Sereda blinks.  She looks down to see Zevran’s head poking out of the tent; she hadn’t even realized that they had made it back to her tent.  Whoops.  

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Sereda says

She tears herself away from the rain and slides into the tent.  At least she can still hear the rain pattering on her tent and feel the rain on her skin.  

“You’re shaking,” Sereda says from on top of Zevran.

“The rain is cold, my dear Warden,” Zevran says and now that she’s listening, she can hear a slight tremor in his voice.  “Which is why I generally prefer to enjoy it from the warmth of a tent.  Inside.”

“Sorry,” Sereda says, brushing her thumb over his shoulder.  

His skin is soaking wet, with goosebumps everywhere she touches.  

“As much as I prefer the warmth of Antiva, the cold was worth it to see your reaction to the rain,” Zevran says.  “I have never seen such wonder on anyone’s face.”

“We don’t have rain or weather in Orzammar.  Not like this,” Sereda says.  “It’s incredible.”

Zevran laughs, but not like he’s making fun of her.  Like he’s enjoying the rain through her.  “I am glad you’re enjoying it.  I fear, given your circumstances, that you have experienced very few surface delights, which is a shame considering all we have to offer up here.”

“You would be surprised,” Sereda says cryptically.  

The last thing she wants to do is reveal just how many things she considers surface wonders.  It’s moderately embarrassing. 

“I am certain I would be,” Zevran says.  

Sereda leans down to lick the rainwater where it’s gathered in the hollow of his throat, delighting as he groans softly.  She has the sudden urge to trace the path of raindrops over every inch of his skin.

“How about I warm you up?  To make up for dragging you into the rain,” Sereda offers.  

She feels too energized to sleep, despite the late hour.  For the first time in too long, she feels truly alive in a way that doesn’t involve violence fueled bursts of adrenaline and the screams of the dead and dying as they fall before her.  Ancestors, being alive is so good.

“Grey Warden stamina will be the death of me, and it will be a glorious death,” Zevran says, hands skimming up her thighs and pulling up the shirt just a little.  

Sereda laughs, tongue tracing along the crease between his stomach muscles, lapping up more rainwater.  “I’m not sexing you to death, don’t worry.”

“Do not misunderstand me, my dear Warden.  Truly, sex is how I always wanted to go,” Zevran says in a breathy voice.  

Sereda presses a kiss to his hipbone.  “Maybe one day, but not today.”

Zevran’s about to say something, but it turns into a long moan.  

* * *

“Feeling warmer?” Sereda asks some time later, nuzzling her face against his cheek.  

Her euphoria has faded slightly, from a buzzing in her body to a low, thrumming flame in her stomach.  It’s better than euphoria, though, because it feels like something that could last beyond this night.  

“Most certainly,” Zevran says, arms wrapped around her tightly.  

“Good,” Sereda says as she scoots so she can rest her head on his chest.  

Zevran’s hand strokes her side, leaving bursts of electricity in his wake.  She realizes, suddenly, that she’s happy.  Not just with the rain pattering against the tent.  With the man she’s curled up with, a person she knows with sudden certainty she’ll fall in love with if they keep going.  With her fellow Warden, who is possibly the truest friend she’s ever made.  With her other friends, asleep in their tents.  Even with her dog.  

Things that could stick, long term.  Things that normal people have.

The thought of being happy when this is all over- happier than she could have been in Orzammar, even- had never occurred to her before this moment.  It’s the most dangerous weapon that she’s ever acquired, a center of steel supporting her already strong will.  

Sereda lays awake that night, enjoying the sound of the rain mixed with the sound of Zevran’s breathing.  It sounds like it could be home one day.


End file.
